


No Roads Left

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Diary/Journal, Drug Abuse, F/M, M/M, Xero era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:26:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1999 and the band is Chester's last chance to pull his life together. But he doesn't tell anybody about his drug troubles or his feelings - he saves all of those for his journal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Roads Left

**26th March 1999; 10:40 a.m.**

 

Stayed sober long enough to buy this piece of shit notebook from the in-flight catalogue. I figure this is a whole new start for me, so I should start a new diary. Maybe put Arizona and all that bullshit behind me for good (probably not, though).

 

I’m feeling pretty junk sick. But Samantha called me every five seconds as I waited at the boarding gate to remind me not to do anything stupid. By that she means shoot up. She keeps telling me that this is the biggest opportunity God has ever given me and I shouldn’t fuck it up by getting high and stumbling off the plane to greet the band whilst having a hallucination.

 

I can’t see what God has to do with it. But Sam is suddenly getting all religious. She keeps saying she prays for me. Whatever. No amount of praying stopped what happened when I was a kid. And if God is our all seeing all knowing father then I have a big mother fucking bone to pick with him. What kind of father does that to their kid?

 

She’s pissed off because I still haven’t opened my birthday presents. I’m pretty sure she’s stuffed them all in my suitcase. I keep telling her, it’s only been a few days.

 

Turns out it’s nearly been a week. Go figure. Looks like amphetamines kill my sense of time too, along with brain cells Samantha keeps reassuring me I’ll be missing pretty soon.

 

**26th March 1999; 12:05 p.m.**

 

Sky Harbor pales in comparison to the monstrosity that is LAX airport. I managed to drag my suitcase from the conveyor belt before the bitch beside me elbowed me out of the way.

 

I don’t have to meet up with the Xero (or is it Zero? I have no fucking idea anymore) guys until three this afternoon. That gives me time to hire a car and find the address my dealer wrote down before I left.

 

Even  _I’m_  not stupid enough to try smuggle drugs into another state. All I need is a little meth. There’s plenty coke back in AZ waiting for me. I’m pretty sure I’m just going to audition then drive back to the airport to fly home and if they want me I’ll drive out. I fucking hate flying.

 

**26th March 1999; 11:12 p.m.**

 

Xero. The band are called. With an ‘x’. And the guitarist is fucking asshole. But they like me, so I guess I can get over that. The MC knows some great bars.

 

And I forgot how much I fucking love meth.

 

And right now I have to fly out to Arizona. Pack up some real shit then drive out tomorrow.

 

And oh shit there’s cops. With sniffer dogs. If I can’t make it from where I’m sitting to the boarding gate without falling over I’m pretty sure they’ll maul me to death.

 

**1st April 1999;**

 

Last night Mike (the MC) found out I’ve been sleeping in my car. He says “No offence dude, but you stink.”

 

How can I not laugh at that? I do. But I can’t afford junk  _and_  a hotel room. And my car isn’t so bad if you ignore all the dirty spoons and the needles in the passenger seat.

 

So I’m staying with him until things get sorted. So far we’ve been fucked left right and center by corporate assholes working for record labels. I know for a fucking  _fact_  that we’re good enough to get signed but nobody seems to give a god damn.

 

Mike’s girlfriend doesn’t like me. Probably that’s because every day when she goes to work Mike and I shoot up in her kitchen. He says heroin isn’t for him. But I just said “Just one hit, do one hit and see if you like it.”

 

So we both lay on his kitchen floor. I’ve done this shit countless times before but I remember my first time and I know that his head will be spinning and he’ll feel like he needs to throw up. So we just lie on his kitchen floor, strung out and listening to the Black Eyed Peas.

 

At the time I told him how much I fucking love the Black Eyed Peas.

 

But I’m coming down now and I can hear them playing downstairs.

 

They actually fucking suck.

 

**12th April 1999;**

 

Staying at Rob’s house. He’s the drummer. He turned twenty this year and got his own apartment. He’s really into alcohol, so mostly I spend my time stepping over old beer cans and vodka bottles. Whatever, at least I don’t feel so out of place and out of my mind here.

 

After the first time we did heroin together Mike said never again. He told me he wouldn’t. He never said that I couldn’t, though, so when he and Anna came home from the store to me freebasing in their kitchen I was surprised at how pissed off he got at me.

 

I apologised to them both separately. I was high but hid it well, and they both smiled warmly when I promised it wouldn’t happen again. The next day at rehearsals Brad marched his scrawny ass over to me and started calling me a good for nothing junkie and that if I ever so much as  _thought_  of using Mike the way I had been ever again he’d rip my head off.

 

He was spitting on my face and saying “Why does your wife put up with you?”

 

So I punched him.

 

Then wondered – why  _does_  she put up with me? Sam could pick any man in the world.

 

Then Mike came over looking pissed.

 

So now I’m staying with Rob. Who doesn’t give a shit how much I use in his house as long as he’s invited. He pays rent, I buy drugs. And when I don’t have the money he buys the drugs and I suck him off in the bathroom.

 

**20th April 1999;**

 

I finally opened those birthday presents. Most of them are crap. But Samantha bought me a Stone Temple Pilots shirt I’ve wanted forever.

 

And I came down so fast I locked myself in Rob’s closet and cried.

 

**1st July 1999;**

 

Looks like I can’t keep a journal the way I thought I could. Fuck all has happened anyway. Mostly it’s been Mike telling me to go get help. He says he knows a guy who runs a programme I can attend for free.

 

I don’t need that shit. I don’t do heroin anymore. Crack is all I need right now, and I’m  _fine._

 

I work at Starbucks for like, five dollars an hour. Which sucks, but really it’s only going to be for a year tops. We’ve renamed the band to Hybrid Theory and we’re still mailing our demo to everybody on the planet. But I know we can make it. It’s just a matter of waiting.

 

Living with Rob isn’t working out so I’m using what money I’m  _not_  spending on heroin to rent a shit hole apartment not far from the building we rehearse in. I’m a couple of blocks from Mike and enough blocks away from Brad that he won’t come and kill me in my sleep the way I used to dream he would.

 

Rob is trying to get clean and I don’t blame him. He looks so much healthier now that he’s getting away from all the bad shit. And Mike keeps telling me, “Look how much better he is!”

 

Yeah, it’s great. But with everybody up on their you-can-break-the-habit-too high horses I’m feeling pretty lonely. For a while Rob and I were more than just friends and I forgot about how much I missed Sam completely but now I’m alone.

 

In other news; Dave, the bassist, bought me a plant as a house warming gift. I’ve called it Steve and have drawn a bow-tie on his pot.

 

Is it bad that I only feel close to a cheap note book and a spider-plant? Is it wrong that last night I got high and told Steve all about how I’m going to buy a gun? Not to suicide with or anything morbid like that.

 

But there’s people coming through the cracks in the door like vapour, ready to kill me. And I need to be ready when the come.

 

**13th July 1999;**

 

I called my brother today and hung up when he answered.

 

I’m going back to bed.

 

**22nd August 1999;**

 

We’ve finished recording the nine demos we need to get show cases and guess what? We got them! I’m over the fucking moon.

 

It’s been days since I got high. I tidied the apartment, went grocery shopping. Shit I was too scared to do before because I’d go to the market high and have a panic attack in the aisle trying to decide what kind of milk I need.

 

I called Samantha but she didn’t answer so I left a message telling her about the show cases we’re doing for different record labels. We’ll be playing in bars and clubs and other little joints for big bosses as well as drunken crowds.

 

It’s strange how badly I want this.

 

**1st September 1999;**

 

If I have to bare my soul for one more fucking corporate whore record label asshole I’m going to fucking kill Mike. I’m tired of pretending that being shot down day after day doesn’t hurt. But everybody is getting so down about it I just smoke a joint and smile at them all.

 

Rob came over today after the gig and we watched TV. I went for a piss and ended up doing a speedball in the bathroom. Rob walked in on me and sat opposite where I was sprawled, half propped up against the tub.

 

I told him how I would be going back to Arizona soon. How I couldn’t take the band failing anymore.

 

He said he’d miss me in a way more genuine than when Sam said it when she dropped me off at Sky Harbor.

 

Then we had sex on the bathroom floor.

 

**16th September 1999; 12 p.m.**

 

I’ve packed my shit up. I’ve sold the apartment. I’ve quit my job.

 

I have ten days to get out of here.

 

**16th September 1999; 7:34 p.m.**

 

I’m going to do ether and call Mike.

 

I don’t know if he’ll be pissed off or relieved.

 

Don’t think I was ever any good for the band anyway. I’m a talentless junkie.

 

Every drug addict wants to be a rock star.

 

**25th September 1999;**

 

I’m driving home tonight. Sam won’t answer the phone and I don’t have my house keys.

 

Brad picked up when I called Mike’s to ask for some advice and told me I brought this all on myself.

 

I don’t even know what to do anymore.

 

**29th September 1999;**

 

Samantha won’t see me. I guess, somehow, she heard about me and Rob. Or maybe it’s the drugs. I can’t even bring myself to care right now.

 

My old dealer, Karl, he said he can put me up for the night as long as I buy something from him. It’s been a while since I shot up heroin, might as well do it now.

 

**25th December 1999;**

 

Got a Christmas card off the band. A letter off Rob begging me to come back. But I can’t. I’m completely broke. Sam wants a divorce and I can’t even afford that. I’m living with this guy who works a strip club. His name is Ryan something. Who fucking knows. We have a shitty little Christmas tree with shitty lights from the ninety nine cents store and a fairy I made out of old tin cans.

 

Her halo is made of pipe cleaner and she’s rusty, but whatever.

 

When things get really bad I pretend I’m still in Los Angeles and the band has made it big. Rob and I are together – _properly_  together, not just sleeping with each other. And I sing songs from the demo as I freebase.

 

**1st January 2000; Midnight**

 

Welcome to the Millennium. Whatever.

 

**20th January 2000;**

 

It’s Rob’s birthday today so I gave him a call.

 

He told me Warner Brother’s have signed them up. They’ve change their name to Linkin Park. He says I should come to their show.

 

I should. But I won’t. Can’t.

 

Besides, I have to work. Ryan got me a job behind the bar at the club. I owe my dealer nine grand. Or my fingers, he says. Which ever is easiest for me to part with.

 

My fingers, I tell him, only half joking.

 

**21st January 2000;**

 

I don’t have the energy of desire to write about my shitty life anymore. Nobody will read this crap anyway. Not even me – reading your own journal is like looking at your own vomit and I do that pretty much every day as it is.

 

So I guess this is the end.

 

But I better write about how I bought a gun.

 

And one bullet.

 

Because that’s important, right?


End file.
